Admin Work

Rafe was a trapper.

He didn’t do admin work.

This was admin work.

Those were his thoughts as he heard the bell clang while opening the door to the last post office on the planet in Sitka, Alaska.

It was his first time here and it was even more depressing than he imagined.

The drab lobby had at least four different shades of gray for the floors, counters, walls and uniforms. It was a small room, maybe able to accommodate a line of 10 people. But behind the counter you could see it opened into a vast warehouse.

And you could definitely smell the distinctive sulfur of the plasma rocket fuel. That was the destination for his package. One Cryptillian to be dispatched to Promethios, the fiery prison planet

But first, he had to fill out the 195 questions for the manifest.

A tablet was thrust into his hand when he entered the lobby. There were two people in front of him and two were behind him.  They didn’t wear the distinctive armor of a trapper so perhaps they were sending care packages to the troops involved in skirmishes across the galaxy. Their faces were glued to their tablets as well.

Rafe sighed, reached into his shirt pocket, and pulled out his glasses.

Scotty, his assistant, had given him a comprehensive lesson on all of the questions designed to trick people up. Scotty wasn’t here because he was “sick.”

“Sick of working,” Rafe muttered to himself as he started dotting the checkboxes.

After finding all of the potential land mines on the form, he went back to start the personal info section.

---

Rafe, born Ralph Williston, came screaming and crying into the world in 2179 after it had gone to hell. Seas rose and the world shrunk into large cities encased in controlled environments. Large swaths of rural America were lost.

With all the major cities now bio domes, trusty ‘ol pneumatic tubes were used to deliver the post, and pretty much anything else.

Rafe grew up in the Seattle biodome, one of the better ones as far as quality of life. His parents were both teachers, a highly esteemed position. They encouraged Rafe to follow in their path. But he was painfully shy and would never have the courage to speak in front of groups of people.

Instead, he found his calling when one of his teddy bears shorted out. The five-year-old grabbed a step stool to raid his father's toolbox of a hydraulic driver and voltmeter. The old man liked to tinker as well.

When Rafe showed his gobsmacked parents his handiwork, his destiny seemed clear.

And then the sky ripped open.

--

There's a bunch of names for it, but Rafe always preferred The Schism. He liked big words.

It started innocently enough. A wormhole appeared over the Western hemisphere approximately 20 years ago. None of our multiple space ports detected it until it appeared.

Another year later there was contact. After another three years of negotiation, they all met for a summit on the McAuliffe Space Port. The Sandarians wanted to mine the silicate on Venus and the Mithrovis harvested the heat from Mercury.

Assurances and compromises were made. Lengthy contracts were signed. For years the wormhole provided for everyone.

And then the Cryptillians ruined everything.

We should have been warned by the Sandarians and Mithrovis. They both had a long history with the Cryptillians but that fact was conveniently not mentioned during negotiations.

They are a particularly greedy and evil race. They can only live off a host. If not, they start to wither and die. It takes about a week. When they do capture a host, it only takes them a few months to burn through them.

Cryptillians are roughly 6 inches long but they are extremely pliable. Their modus operandi is to find a place near a prospective host to hide. When the host falls asleep, they emerge and stretch themselves over the host in a micro thin layer.

The host can feel, taste, see and hear everything. But they aren't in control.

The Cryptillian has strong neural processing abilities as well to take over and mimic your speech and thought functions.

When, and if, you find a discarded host it looks like they have been stuck in a dehydrating machine.

After a few months and a score of bodies, someone found a tear in the wormhole. No telling how many of those things had gotten through.

That's when the call for trappers was raised.

--

Rafe was happy before that.

He was the proud owner of a very successful refrigerator repair business. Most of the time it was dialing back the judgment of the AI interface.

“Don’t eat that whole pint of ice cream in one sitting, Rafe!”

But when his number one supplier was found jerk-ified (some dark soul nicknamed them Human Jerky), he decided to put his electrical skills to good use.

--

Rafe still remembered the colorful billboard at the tube port stating, “Alaska, the last outpost!”

Alaska was the last place you could live outdoors.

He set up a repair shop, switching his focus to heaters because Alaska didn't need much refrigeration help. That was his cover.

Next, he had to find a Cryptillian.

It was easier than he thought. Alaska was a gathering place for shady people.

The carcass wasn't alive, but he could study it.

It was metallic, scaly and rubbery.

He couldn't exactly reverse engineer the biological aspects of it, but he did work on ways to identify them without the Cryptillians knowing it. Within a month he had devised a pair of glasses that would pick up the sheen of their skin.

Rafe’s second discovery was the game changer.

He was making his coffee one morning on his desk. The open container with the Cryptillian was by the cup. Rafe ripped open 3 packs of artificial sweetener and dumped them into the cup. He went to itch his nose and breathed in the powder causing him to sneeze. A light dust coated the Cryptillian’s tail, and it promptly turned black.

Rafe spilled his coffee.

--

The last step was testing. He headed to what was considered a Cryptillian hotspot near The Schism. The city square had a small park in the middle. He took a seat on the park bench and pulled out a book. Rafe calmed himself inside before reaching into his shirt pocket, fishing out his glasses, and putting them on. He pretended to read for a few seconds before glancing up.

Rafe’s heart pounded in his chest like a bass drum.

Cryptillians were everywhere.

He still had one more test to run.

After about 30 minutes of abject fear, Rafe picked the smallest person he could find. It was a young lady walking away from the square towards a side street.

He stuck his book inside of his jacket pocket, fingered the trigger on his weapon, and started to follow her.

Thankfully, she was by herself when he approached. Rafe calmly pulled out a converted Nerf gun loaded with sweetener buckshot.

It was a direct shot in the back. The gun was quiet, the victim was not.

A piercing, metallic shriek erupted and then the Cryptillian unleashed the half dead host onto the sidewalk. The little reptile like creature squirmed and stopped, paralyzed.

Not sure what to do, Rafe picked up the creature and put it in his pocket.

--

That was nearly ten years and 153 captures ago, thought Rafe with a smile. It disappeared when he looked up.

He was again surrounded by Cryptillians. Besides him, the postal worker was the only other human in the lobby.

“Next!” the attendant yelled.

Rafe Approached the counter like business as usual.

“Exporting?” asked the attendant. Ralph, the nametag said.

“Ralph, I’m Rafe.”

Ralph’s face indicated his lack of interest.

“I have one Class C export,” said Rafe, getting down to business. He handed the tablet to Ralph.

Rafe Leaned in close, imploring Ralph to make eye contact with him. There was a message on the tablet for the worker.

“Lobby full of C’s. Just stand still.”

Ralph saw the message. Beads of sweat popped out on his forehead. Rafe made a calming gesture with his right hand and then slid his jacket to the side to show he was armed, and then pantomimed an explosion.

Ralph’s eyes widened as the trapper made his move.

It was over before the Cryptillians could blink.

Rafe took the tablet in his left hand and slung it right at the line of people to distract them. With his right hand he unclipped a SweetBomb grenade, slamming it to the ground and clouding the entire room with artificial sweetener.

The four impostors simultaneously extracted from their prey where Rafe scooped them all up.

“Make that five exports,” he said to the shell shocked attendant.

He was still coughing from the dust in the room.

“Transport is on the house,” Ralph said.

--

There was still one more thing on the list. Rafe had been a successful trapper for one reason.

Privacy.

No one knew anything about him or his methods. Every capture was unique and precisely planned. That's why he used an admin person. He didn't want to be predictable. With only one post office left on the planet, that was the one place they knew he would be.

Rafe climbed into his power wagon. He reached over to the compartment hidden in the dash, typed in the code, and pulled out the plasma pistol.

It was time to pay Scotty a visit.